The Half Blood Prince, Not Half Bad.

This is a review that I find myself wondering if I should write it at all. After all, we all know what to expect and we’ll all go see it, anyway, regardless what anyone says. So I’ll make it short and sweet.

Plot and Acting

All right I won’t go into the plot. We all know the plot. A few quick thoughts on the acting; I’m still not a fan of Michael Gambon’s Dumbledore and I’m still a big fan of Alan Rickman as Snape.

Jim Broadbent. What can I say, no surprise there at all. He does a great job as Professor Horace Slughorn. It’s truly a pleasure to watch an accomplished master work. What was a surprise and a pleasant one at that was Tom Felton. Draco Mallfoy grew up and became an actor! This guy can act. Certainly a lot better than any other Sixth Year Hogwarts students. If the whole Voldemort’s apprentice thing doesn’t work out, Draco can go to the Diagon Alley playhouse and have a career. Helena Bonham Carter looked like she had a really good time playing Bellatrix Lestrange and I had a really good time watching her do it. The rest of the cast was competent, but no one else really stood out.

Directing

I wasn’t all that impressed with David Yates‘ directing in the previous Harry Potter – Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoneix – and I am even more dissatisfied with this one. Yates takes absolutely no chances and the movie suffers because of it. I know it’s a multi-Gazzillion Dollar Franchise and you don’t want to blow up the movie by taking chances and I know that J.K Rowling and the studio probably has snipers trained on him at all times so as not to deviate form the formula, but that’s the thing. This formula didn’t work! The movie is little more than a not very exciting action adventure flick without all that much of either. Gone is the mystery of earlier movies. Gone is the flow of earlier movies. And gone is the magic. The director chose to highlight parts of the book that I think weren’t all that important and chose to completely ignore other parts that I thought should have been featured. I don’t know why the connection that Harry developed with the half Blood Prince via the latter’s book was completely ignored. After all, that’s the movie and the title of the movie right? Because of that omission, it was really awkward when Harry was reluctant to part with the book. As the movie presented it, there was no reason for Harry not to chuck it aside without a thought.

The director, and whomever else was involved, decided to spend more time on the comedic aspect of teen love. But I have to tell you – it fell flat. The only ones who were laughing in the theater were very young kids. Most of those scenes and story lines could have been condensed to develop the actual story line of the Half Blood Prince. Oh well.

All in all not a bad movie, but when your budget is limitless, when you have such a great story to work with, and a built-in audience, why not take a chance? Why not make a great movie? I don’t know if any future Harry Potter films will ever capture the magic of the earlier ones, but this one is really really far from it.

So far, this one just edged out Order of the Phoenix as my least favorite of the Harry Potter movies. OK so now go and see it and have a wonderfull time!